The Big Picture:

In 2017, GBQ, one of the top 100 tax, accounting, and consulting firms in the country, had more than doubled in size over the previous decade. This growth was fueled by strategic acquisitions and a significant expansion of service offerings. A major rebrand in 2008 had set the stage for this growth, but it was really just a starting point.

Throughout its 70+ year history, GBQ had evolved significantly, but the narrative they shared internally and externally had not kept pace. This misalignment between who they were and how they were perceived began to hold them back, making it clear that the GBQ story needed to evolve to accurately reflect the firm’s current identity and vision for growth.

“We were several years into [the rebrand] when it was like, We don’t have the right alignment to back up the branding. The branding looks cool, but we don’t have the guts of, What are we saying that’s any different than what anybody else is saying? It’s more about who we are than it is just about how we present ourselves.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director

When Storyforge talked to their employees and clients, it quickly became obvious that this was no ordinary accounting firm. GBQ discovered that the purpose at the center of their company was the same for every team. Every function. Every office and role. That it encompasses clients, employees, and community.

It immediately changed how each function and department saw their work, and how each person understood their colleagues’ work as in service to a larger shared purpose. Their work was not about the how, but about a higher shared why. 

What started as an external positioning exercise became much bigger, deeper, and farther-reaching. Reflecting on the initial engagement with Storyforge Managing Director Darci Congrove put it this way:

“We’re working on doubling the size of our firm in five years. It took 66 years to build the first half. We’re working on significant talent initiatives and a crisis situation. And we’ve got clients who are lining up to hope to work with us. If we didn’t have some framework to process all of that, I think we would be in a state of chaos. There’s a lot of change happening at GBQ, and we’re working on a lot to make the organization better, particularly process and technology. We can do all of that because we all know what direction we’re going in.” 

The Challenge:

For decades, GBQ had built its reputation upon the concept of the “hometown hero,” a local business servicing the locals of Columbus, Ohio. As their success drove expansion into new cities, they found that the story they’d been telling for years no longer fit.

GBQ’s growth led to a new, bigger office, which in turn led to a rebrand. A few years in, after more growth and acquisition, they realized the rebrand was only at the surface level, without any real story behind it. At the same time, GBQ was encountering issues with alignment; they saw silos across functions and teams and offices that didn’t see themselves as part of a larger connected story.

As their client base grew, and the needs of their clients grew, their talent pool was shrinking. Since 2017, accounting program enrollments have steadily declined. Bachelor’s and master’s accounting graduates decreased by 4% in 2017/18, then dropped again by 2.8% and 8.4% respectively in 2019/2020, the rate of decline exacerbated by the global pandemic (The CPA Journal)​​.

How could GBQ stand out in a shrinking pool of candidates?

Aiming to support their growth into new locales and to attract strong new hires, they moved to a sleek new office space and underwent a big, fresh, modern rebrand. But beneath all these surface changes, their internal identity did not align with their outward communication.

“GBQ had realized significant growth with expansion into other markets. In addition to the geographic expansion, we were starting to offer more sophisticated service lines and getting into some industries that we hadn’t been a part of before. But there was a disconnect between how we thought and talked about ourselves. While the brand was solid and well respected – it served us well and it’s still serving us well – we had evolved, and we realized it was time to revisit our story and messaging.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

After Working with Storyforge:

GBQ went into the engagement with Storyforge thinking that they had a branding problem, but it turned out to run much deeper than that. 

“It’s transformative work. […] I didn’t imagine how deep we would go when we set out to engage somebody to help us with the project. It […] turned into way more than what I was initially trying to solve internally. It was about getting to the bottom of what our purpose is and what we do and why we do it. Really about finding GBQ’s why, and then supporting us after the fact too. It’s not just a marketing exercise.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

To uncover GBQ’s meaningful story, Storyforge held extensive interviews – not just with their clients, but also with employees, vendors, partners, and many other critical stakeholders, both new and longstanding.

“We undertook the project collaboratively. We worked with pretty much all employees and the leadership team, on down to our vendors, partners, clients, prospects, referral sources, friends of the firm, [and] community members… we really tried to get at the root of why we do what we do.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

It wasn’t about creating a shiny new wrapper for the business, but rather digging deeper into what had already been driving their success for decades. The GBQ team was astounded at seeing themselves reflected in their clients’ words.

“They did not talk about accounting! I think that was the part that was shocking for all of us. Nobody talked about, You do great accounting or You do great tax returns. They were talking about the feelings, the relationships, the help that we had given them to make their businesses better. It was completely disconnected from what I expected it would be.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director

“You uncovered the story of growth. What was most surprising to me was looking at the words […] you had heard most often in conversations with our associates, clients, referral sources and vendors. They were words like growth and relationships and value and community and partners and credibility.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

Together with Storyforge, GBQ landed on Empowering Growth – for their clients’ businesses, for their communities, and for their people – as their shared purpose and the anchor of their meaningful story. This simple, powerful foundation became a filter for thinking and doing across the entire firm.

“It ended up becoming something that touched every department and person within the firm. It became the lens that we looked through when we’re making decisions and when we’re living life at the firm […], does this empower growth of our people? Does this empower growth of our communities? Does it empower growth of our clients’ businesses? And it really helped [provide] some clarity, not only around what we do and how we do it, but why we do it. And that has been that guiding force for us ever since.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

They started collecting the very human stories of growth from every team, every department, and every office, creating a versatile library that they could use in their recruitment, marketing, and employee engagement.

“At this point, I’m proud to tell you, we’ve got a library of over 250 videos and stories, from clients and from referral sources and from employees, and really have built a culture now around the human part of what we all do.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director’

How a Story of Purpose Transformed GBQ’s Talent Acquisition and Retention:

Even as competition for talent in the accounting industry grows ever more challenging, GBQ has leveraged its human-powered story to stand out from the rest. After working with Storyforge, GBQ grew their team by 29%, and continues to grow year-over-year.

“We have something different to say than many of the firms do, particularly to experienced hires who actually know how to compare and contrast. The idea of purpose is engaging to people.We talk to people about what the impact is of what we do, not necessarily what are the tasks are that we do. We’re being really intentional about the human experience.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director

Through all this growth and change, GBQ’s story, brand, and culture has stayed strong. This unwavering base has been key to retaining all the new people – and that goes for both employees and clients.

“We can clearly tie both associate retention and client retention to the purpose. We have very little client turnover, and this has been a very volatile last five years. I think that’s because we are consistent in the way we’re executing against that purpose. We’ve given people some freedom to be who they are and to do what they do best – and not put a whole lot of guardrails around that. This has put us in an employer of choice place for a very long time.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director

6 Years Later: Revisiting The Story

Six years after GBQ’s first engagement with Storyforge in 2017, the world looked very different, both externally and within the firm. The world had weathered a global pandemic, which upended the labor market. GBQ went from zero turnover and enormous growth in 2020, to a great deal of turnover in 2021.

GBQ also completed an acquisition around the same time frame. The deal closed just as the COVID shutdown occurred. Additionally, during that time, the firm onboarded close to 100 new associates, despite everyone working from home.

With the wave of new people coming in all at once, the GBQ team felt it was time to revisit the work they had done with Storyforge.

“I think it was a process of refreshing what everybody knew, but also just doing a gut check of, were we still aligned? What we developed with Storyforge in 2017, 2018, did it still hold true in 2023 and 2024 and beyond? It was important for us to do a little revisit and determine whether that was still what suited us from a purpose and direction standpoint.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

Businesses grow and the world shifts around them, but meaningful stories persist through time. Revisiting the GBQ story together with Storyforge helped the firm reaffirm alignment and clarity around its purpose. 

“The most impactful aspect of the work was how it re-energized our entire team and organization. It helped us revisit the purpose, clearly defining and articulating that purpose. That clarity is instrumental in the attraction and retaining of talent like we talked about, but also disambiguating our engagement with clients and ultimately driving our strategic growth.

Personally, seeing how that has resonated with employees and clients has been fulfilling, but it also helps us as we talk about transforming the way we approach our work and fostering the culture that makes GBQ who we are.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

Go Deeper: On Storyforge’s Impact

• On marketing: “There’s never any gray space. It’s always clear […] who we are, what we do, why we do it, and who we serve. You know what our purpose is and how we […] will go to market, and being able to do that through stories has been fun. That’s the part that brings us all to life, right? I feel like I have the fun job of it. And it’s not just me, my entire team is really putting that out into the universe.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

• On a story that’s bigger than the business: “It’s been important to continue to gather those stories and to share them both internally and externally. Because the stories do the storytelling. We don’t have to be the ones tooting our own horn. The clients and even our associates, just by telling their story, speaks volumes.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy
  
• On a framework for change: “It’s provided a lens to look at everything we do. Everything from large business decisions in terms of an acquisition or a strategic hire down to, Is this meeting empowering the growth of our people, our communities, our clients? That’s our guiding light through everything that we do.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

• On acquisition: “It’s been useful when we’re onboarding a new firm that we’ve just acquired, setting forth the clarity around how we work and what we value. In that process, when I’m meeting with a room full of our new hires, everybody can see themselves in [our story], regardless of where they sit, what office they’re in, what geography it is or what role they play, whether they’re the receptionist or a partner. There’s that ability to connect to people, communities and clients. That’s been an advantage when we’ve gone through strategic growth that we’ve experienced since this project, helping us to onboard and acclimate people within our culture.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy
  

On Working with Storyforge:

“I appreciate the deep understanding and commitment to the work you do and the perspective that you brought. This is all Storyforge does. You weren’t trying to sell us on a website and creative to support it, plus five other things. You do one thing really well. You weren’t just consultants, you were partners who were invested in seeing us distill that purpose and find what that meant for us.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

“Storyforge is not a traditional marketing and branding company. Their whole thing, as the name suggests, is that stories are what attract customers, stories are what retain employees, and storytelling can be a huge tool in business, period. We chose them because frankly, the stories they told us were compelling, and so we felt like it was something that would fit. We were doing that with the intention of marketing and branding. What we ended up with was so much more than that, and I think we realized that as we were halfway through the process, that this is about way more than market facing, getting businesses to want to work with GBQ. This is about how we work at GBQ, who we are, how we treat our employees, how we take care of our clients.” – Darci Congrove, Managing Director

“It felt to us like you made a process just for us. It felt very custom. You figured us out and then adapted. We found a rhythm that worked, which is hard. It’s hard to bring people into your business and ask them how to make it better. We thoroughly enjoyed the process and I will tell you, that’s generally not the case with consultants.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

“I think anybody could go through this, any industry, any company, any size. You have to be willing and open to it.” – Sara Robertson, Director of Marketing Strategy

To learn more about how Storyforge can help you forge your meaningful story and get everyone and everything in your business on the same page, contact us by clicking the button below.